spot

Andy Chandler, mastermind behind the hilarious Sandy Blvd Trailer, started making comedy shorts in high school and polished his technical skills working for Portland’s KGW Channel 8 News for the last six years. This skilled filmmaker can bang out a highly produced film on his computer with limited resources.

Filmed by Bike audiences will have the rare opportunity to see the last bike movie shot on Kodachrome film. Kodachrome debuted in 1935 and was an instant hit as the first film to effectively, and later extremely vibrantly, render color.

The very last Kodachrome processing machine was shut down in at the end of 2010, and filmmaker Lars C. Larsen, a veteran Filmed by Bike participant, managed to get one last film made before processing was no longer available. The result is “Cyclocross on Kodachrome 40”, a gritty, gorgeous cyclocross portrait set to a killer soundtrack (as Larsen’s films always are).

Our Filmmaker Q+A sessions are powerful nights in the theater, an opportunity to get to know the creative minds behind some of Filmed by Bike’s favorite movies.

When the LCD Soundsystem remade the video for their song Drunk Girls, they chose to film it with a cadre of Portland bikers. The result is a gritty party video. Producer Kevin Sullivan will be on stage to discuss this piece, why they chose Portland, how they found the actors and how they developed the rough-and-tumble concept of an underground tall bike jousting bout.

In Portland, the name Lars Larsen may ring a bell – of alarm: the conservative talk show host (Larson) is well known for giving bikers a hard time. But there’s another Lars in town who is fighting more for good than evil: Lars C. Larsen. This Lars is a Portland based filmmaker who has been involved with Filmed by Bike for four years now. With his films, Lars brings a creative approach to the festival, such as the ultra-short 2009 Speed Kills that was shot with a cool vintage effect.

Lars’s films have appeared in the Chicago Underground Film Festival, the Caucophany Film Festival, at San Francisco Film Arts, the Humboldt International Film Festival and now for the fourth time at Filmed By Bike. Lars is currently working on the TNT drama series Leverage and he has previously worked on Coraline, The Hunted, and several TV and film productions shot in and around Portland.

Lars’s most recent film Go! Paperboy! will show in Program 1. Program details >>

Filmmaker Oliver Ogden first heard about Filmed by Bike by seeing posters up at some of his favorite haunts. He was quickly inspired to work on a movie, and set about brainstorming ideas. “As a filmmaker and bike enthusiast,” he says, “I didn’t want to pass this opportunity to brush elbows with like minded Portlanders.”

One night, unable to sleep and continuously thinking of movie ideas, Ogden was struck with nostalgia for the fond memories of his youth, and he came up with the concept for Derailed, which will debut at this year’s Filmed by Bike. “The question arose,” he says, “can someone return to those idyllic carefree times while being weighed down by life’s trivialities?”

To find out Ogden’s take on that question, you’ll have to come see Derailed, which is part of the Pump it Up program. Showings: Fri 7,9 // Sat 5 // Sun 7,9

Ricardo Portilho, a Brazilian bike enthusiast and art director, heard about Filmed by Bike from the Amsterdam-based Gerrit Rietveld Academy mailing list. His film “I Just Can’t Forget These Things” will show in our 2008 festival.The impetus for the movie came from an assignment Portilho received from Kosmopolis, an organization from Rotterdam that works with cross-cultural relationships in The Netherlands. Continue reading →

Bill Prouty is a Minneapolis-based filmmaker. His thrilling chase film TAG pits a cyclist against a super-skilled rollerblader on the streets of London. You wouldn’t know it, but Bill says the piece was a totally guerilla production, filmed by hanging off the backs of busses, clinging to a motorcycle and skating along side the action. “All very dangerous,” he says, “but no serious injuries to speak of.”Continue reading →

Ashira Siegel’s film “Even the Girls” showed at our 2006 festival. “During the time I worked as a messenger in NYC” Ashira says, “I had all these crazy experiences that involved peoples reactions to seeing a woman in a job that most people don’t really expect a woman to work. At the same time we’d get mad props from people as well, but it was also because of our gender. It was bizarre because all the women I knew who were earning their living on their bikes were these amazingly strong, smart, focused, well spoken, really cool women who were drawn to the physicality of messengering and the adrenaline of rushing around the city on our bikes.”

And she had never made a movie before, but she was motivated. ” Riding my bike and messengering in the city changed my life. There is great community among messengers and biking made me strong, not just physically, but in my mind as well. It sharpened my senses and taught me to stand strong and firm, to speak up, even yell if I have to, and not feel bad about it. It gave me a confidence that nothing in my life ever had before. It really empowered me. ”

It wasn’t all fun and games putting the movie together, with a broken camera, damaged footage, re-shooting, and lots of learning, but in the end, Ashira says, the piece became her homage to riding. In short, Ashira declares that riding bikes saved her life, so the least she could do was to make a movie about it. Continue reading →

Joshua Frankel has been working as an animator and in visual effects for the past six years. His film, Bicycle Messengers, features animated messengers set against a backdrop of live action footage shot in Manhattan. “I was interested in integrating my animation, but drawing attention to the differences between the real and the fantasy,” Joshua says.

In the piece, Joshua says, he “cast bicycle messengers as mythological heroes in our contemporary society. They can do things that no one else can, they risk life and limb for their task, they live by their own codes, and they are simultaneously admired and feared by the general public. Like comic superheroes, a lot of them even wear tights. Usually we need to go off into fantasy worlds in find romanticism these days… its pretty fun find some of those elements right here in our midst. I’ve tried to do it in a way that is fair and not offensive, (mostly by leaving lots of bits mysterious so that the viewer’s imagination has a lot to chew on), and so far the reactions from messengers has been positive, so that’s good.”

Next up Joshua is working on a short fully animated piece about climate change. He’s also developing concepts for a more narrative extension of Bicycle Messengers and a public art piece that he describes as “fairly ambitious.”

Martin Reis, from Toronto, Canada, is very busy with all things bike: from being a cycling activist to his blog Martino’s Bike Lane Diary. He never really thought of himself as a moviemaker until last year when he put together La Fuga di Olma and submitted it to Filmed by Bike. The piece easily won over the jury with its vintage found super-8 footage and sweet story of an Italian bike that longs for home.

This year you’ll see Martin’s submission Love to All the Rebels, a short, upbeat visual collage.

When he’s not busy riding bikes, Martino works in the arts for a Baroque Orchestra called Tafelmusik. He also enjoys still photography. But what is it about bikes that so engages Martin? ” Simple” he says. “Human and machine in harmony. They are blissful things.”